“Pirate Printers” Raubdruckerin literally take to the streets in their home Berlin but also in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Paris and around the world and print shirts using objects on the streets. So cool. Some photos and then a more or less translation down below about what they are about. Raubdruckerin uses existing surfaces such as grids,…
We recently printed the wrong back on a series of four colors of shirts that have the same front but in different colors and one gets a different back. Last order somebody screwed up and we printed the wrong back on that one design. Everybody was told to be careful this time and print that…
We have posted before on the Ink Kitchen on what you can do about ink spots on garment dyed shirts. Check it out here. The short answer, is “not much.” The shirts are wonderful and customers love the feel and the colors, but the dye system that makes them wonderful also gives printers problems. One of…
One of our most popular series here at the Ink Kitchen is “Misprint Monday.” The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “…in the misfortunes of our best friends there is something which is not altogether displeasing to us…” I don’t want you readers to get the wrong impression from our articles on how to do things “correctly” that we…
I know we all have a different opinion on the shirts we like to wear. I have to say my absolute favorite shirt is the American Apparel TR401 tri-blend. This shirt also happens to be one of the most expensive to purchase… Although American Apparel has superior quality and is made right here in the…
The exact instructions for how to cure ink are “figure it out.” There is no magic formula of dryer setting and belt speed that I can give you, no matter how many of you beg for that information. There are too many variables. Some of this follows earlier posts, but this is a topic that continues…
These days most of your customers don’t want to visit your factory unless it is a “show and tell” field trip. We have found that the days of press checks are long long gone and that even nervous customers with large orders don’t want to visit the plant. Too much traffic, they are too busy,…
Occasionally we make bad calls on the production floor. Recently we had an order and the pantones were all specified. When we printed the blue that the design called for, it looked nothing like the mockup. Someone made the call to print the job anyway… Of course when the customer received the shirts, they didn’t…
Hot market printing is exciting, stressful, fun, and frustrating all at the same time. In the case of the 2016 NBA Finals a handful of us printers located in Northern California were a little down after the Golden State Warriors were defeated last night. So this morning, as our team packs up 30,000 royal blue tees to be…
I have always had awful penmanship. Now, thanks to myscriptfont.com I’ve immortalized my awful handwriting in font form. So, instead of using Helvetica as my go-to font for all purposes, “Tom’s Hand” will be my default font. It was easy…
